Welcome to the class blog of Ben Villarreal's Freshman English 12 Course: Visual and Verbal Literacies! Here you'll find the thoughts, ideas, and burgeoning written work from our class about the multiple literacies we experience.

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28 February 2012

Was it all just a trick?

The purpose of Horrocks' article on Scott McCloud's book Understanding
Comics was to breakdown how McCloud's writing persuaded his audience
into believing and agreeing with everything he was writing. Horrocks believes
that instead of helping his audience understand comics better, McCloud was
actually painting the picture that he felt people should have of comics. Along
with breaking down McCloud's writing method, Horrocks also writes about how
with McCloud using the writing method that he did, it led to the reason as to
why there no discussions being held about comics. By creating the image of
comics for everyone, they all agreed and believed in what McCloud was saying
about comics and that became the problem with why there no discussions of
McCloud's work.

Horrocks explains how in
chapter one of McCloud's book where he gives his audience the definition of
comics, instead of explaining the definition, McCloud is actually telling his
audience what to believe is and isn't comics. McCloud's first step towards getting
his audience to view comics the way he does is he tries to get rid of all the
stereotypes and negative connotations that were brought on in the past. After
getting rid of any kind of view on comics, McCloud begins to bring up the idea
that he adopted from Eisner, of “sequential art” and the reason he chooses
sequential art is because it focuses on something McCloud believes makes
comics, closure. He then, very cleverly, persuades his audience to believe the
definition that McCloud gave is the best definition there is for comics.

The points that Dylan Horrocks makes in his articles all made
sense and were very good points. I liked the fact that he was one of very few
who actually questioned the views and ideas of McCloud’s book. It was good to
hear opinions that were against what McCloud had written and to actually see
how McCloud was able to persuade his audience into believing what he had
written.